Minimum Wage Redux

Since I posted on the Minimum Wage controversy this morning some more matters have come to my attention. The usual canard that minimum wages only apply to students is far from the truth as Statistics Canada shows;

JUST OVER 1.3 million full-time employees aged 16 to 64 held low wage jobs (less than $10 dollars per hour) in 2004, representing one in every seven, or about 14% of all full-time employees.

This rate represented only a slight change from 16% in 1993. It peaked at just over 20% in 1996.

From 1993 to 2004, the proportion of women in low wage jobs remained roughly double that of men. Women are more likely to be in low paid occupations such as clerical, sales and service jobs.

Low wage work was also far more prevalent for those with lower levels of education.

The proportion of youngest workers aged 16 to 24 in low wage jobs was consistently three to four times that of older workers aged 25 to 64. This reflects the tendency of the labour market to reward experience and job tenure.

Those who were not their family's major income earner were not likely to live in a low income family. In 2004, only 3.5% of low wage workers who were not the family's major income earner lived in a low income family.

In contrast, the group of low wage workers who were their family's major or sole income earners (including people living on their own) was seven times more likely (almost 25%) to experience low income.

Among major income earners with a low wage, single people and lone parents experienced the highest rates of low income.

And the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives also makes this point in their paper on the need to increase the Minimum Wage in Nova Scotia.

Women, the minimum wage and poverty wages

A disproportionate percentage of minimum wage workers are women (63%)9. This is
confirmed by a Statistics Canada study that found that in 2003, across Canada “women
accounted for almost two-thirds of minimum wage earners, yet they make up just under
half of employees

The reality is that women continue to disproportionately make lower wages than men. In
2003, 25% of women earned less than $8.33, in contrast, 25% of men earned less than
$10.05. Leaving the minimum wage low puts a higher burden on women than on men.
Lower wages also leave many women dependent upon the male breadwinners in their
households Add to this the reality that women are also usually responsible for
maintaining their households and are the most vulnerable when it comes to getting laid
off and we get a picture of the gendered nature of poverty. We also get an indication of
the need for an increase in the minimum wage to support low income women and
households.

Minimum wage and part time work

Minimum wage workers are more likely to find themselves in part-time employment. In
2000, 57.2% of minimum wage workers worked part-time, while only 18.2% of the
overall workforce works part-time. While some workers may chose to work part-time,
others can only find part-time work, are often forced to work at more than one job to
make ends meet. Part-time employment not only tends to pay less but also does not
usually entitle workers to benefits. Another reason for increasing the minimum wage to
support part-time workers is that part-time work is often also short term and
unpredictable. Part-time workers need a minimum wage high enough to allow them not
only to live but to cover costs during the frequent breaks between jobs and during layoffs.

And the statistics show that those who rely on minimum wages, or just above, also rely on Food Banks more than they rely on shopping at Sobeys or Safeways.

Low-income earners are in a different position: Statistics Canada's 1998–99 National Population Health Survey reported that more than 10 percent of Canadians (an estimated 3 million people) were living in food-insecure households. In addition, the Institute for Research on Public Policy reports that food banks, which emerged in the 1980s in Canada, are growing quickly. Some 1800 new food banks opened between 1997 and 2002 (McIntyre 2003, 47). These developments suggest that, far from boosting restaurant and grocery store business, many low-income Canadians rely on charity for part of their food budget, or sometimes do without, as they are unable to fully participate in the market-based food retail sector.

It is this economic imbalance that shows we need not just minimum wages of $10 and hour but we need a social wage to replace the welfare system which is driving the working poor (women, single mothers, in particular) further into poverty.

The hidden faces of Canada's poor

Frances McNutt, a Scarborough mother with four young children under the age of 12, is struggling to get by on social assistance. But after the Ontario government claws back the National Child Benefit Supplement from her meagre payment and she pays her $990 rent, she is left with only $122 to feed and clothe her children and herself until the middle of each month when her $300 child-support cheque arrives.

After six years on welfare, McNutt is trying to get back on her feet by taking job training and doing volunteer work, but she admits it's hard.

McNutt is just one of the 5.3 million hidden faces of poverty in Canada. Tragically, the number of people living in poverty has grown – not dropped – in recent years despite economic boom times in many parts of this nation. Those good times, though, have bypassed many Canadians. Today, one in six Canadians, including 1.2 million children, live a miserable existence on incomes well below anyone's definition of poverty.

Which is why some insightful feminist bloggers blasted Cherniak over his post.

See:

Wages

Minimum Wage

Social Wage

Jason Cherniak


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Canadian CEO Blinks Earns $38,000

Top CEOs outearn average Canadians by January 2nd.

Hey that's today. It took less than 24 hours for Canada's fat cats to earn what you and I make in a year.

And the average worker has not made ANY real gain in wages for the past decade, which just adds insult to injury.

While the corporate elite got a 262% wage and bonus increase between 2005 and the end of 2006.

Perhaps we should declare January 2 the official Canadian Piggie Day for how much the boss class makes off our backs, while barely blinking an eye, or lifting a pen, or doing anything really productive besides lining their own pockets and those of their shareholders, who are all major pension funds, our pension funds in fact.

By the time the average Canadian grudgingly drags his or her still-hungover body into work Tuesday, swaps holiday tales with the stiff in the next cubicle, and hunkers down to work, the country's highest-paid CEOs will have already earned the worker's annual salary.

Minimum-wage workers would have barely rolled out of bed on New Year's Day by the time the country's top earners pocketed the $15,931 that will likely take the low-paid workers all of 2007 to make.

A study released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says the 100 highest-paid private-sector executives will have earned an average Canadian's salary of $38,010 by 9:46 a.m. Tuesday.

That's not comforting news to the many Canadians whose primary motivation for heading back to work after the holidays is being able to start paying off their Christmas credit card bills.

"When you say that the average CEO made $9 million in 2005 and the average Canadian made ($38,000), the comparison between those things is so far into the stratosphere that I think people have trouble just coming to terms with what the comparison means," said Hugh Mackenzie, an economist with the independent research institute that focuses on issues of social and economic justice.

"Converting it into time sort of puts it into a frame that people can get their heads around."

Mackenzie crunched the numbers based on 2005 salary figures from Statistics Canada and Report on Business magazine's most recent listing of the 100 best-paid CEOs of Canadian publicly traded companies.

According to his figures, by the time Canadians flick on the 6 p.m. news Tuesday, the average CEO will have pocketed a staggering $70,000.

"I was kind of hoping it would get into the second week of January. As it turns out, it was not even close," Mackenzie quipped. "Once people get over how stunning the differentials are, I think it really raises a lot of questions in people's minds."

"How can somebody possibly be worth that amount in income and ... if those people are taking that much money out of the company or out of the economy, what does that mean for what's left for the rest of us?"

And don't forget these fat cats are a minority in Canada.

Wealth survey highlights include:

- The concentration of wealth at the high end continued to grow from
1999 to 2005.
- The wealthiest 20% families held 69.2% of the total net wealth in
Canada, up from 68.5% in 1999. That increase in share was entirely at
the expense of the middle 20%, whose share dropped from 8.8% to 8.4%.
- The net worth of the 20% of families at the bottom of the wealth
scale was negative again in 2005.
- Debt increased at a faster rate than net worth. More than 6.5% of
families literally operate under water -- with negative net worth.
- Between 1999 and 2005, the median debt load for families rose 38%,
from $32,300 in 1999 to $44,500 in 2005.

While the Fraser Institute declares Tax Freedom Day in June to show
how much government taxes us, the fact is that their prescription for tax cuts
have NOT benefited working class Canadians.

Canada is falling behind a number of OECD nations in a wide range of social and economic areas, and a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives points to tax cuts as the culprit.

The study, by Neil Brooks and Thaddeus Hwong, compares high-tax Nordic countries and low-tax Anglo-American countries on 50 social and economic measures and finds the high-tax Nordic countries score better in 42 categories.

According to the study, tax cuts are disastrous for the well-being of a nation’s citizens. For example, the high-tax Nordic countries have:

• lower rates of poverty, more equal income distribution, and more economic security for their workers;
• a higher GDP per capita;
• higher rates of household saving and net national saving;
• greater innovation, including a higher percentage of GDP spent on research and development;
• a higher ranking on their growth competitiveness by the World Economic Forum;
• higher rates of secondary school and university completion; and
• less drug use, more leisure time, and higher life satisfaction.

A tip o' the blog to Jacobs Super Patented Brain Thoughts

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Wages

Productivity

Taxes

Wealth

Plutocrats Rule

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Knight Of The Long Knives

This is from a Blogging Tory.... But what to do about Peter MacKay? It may now be safe politically for Harper to dump one of the weakest links in Cabinet, or if not to punt him from Cabinet, to shuffle him somewhere where he can do less harm than in Foreign Affairs.

You can literally hear the knives being sharpened now as the Cabinet Shuffle begins in earnest on the good ship Tory Titanic.

As for Pete being harmful in Foreign Affairs, I think not.

I am afraid his political optics have been all about his Affiars this year. And at least one of his alleged affairs has been with a Foreigner. So I would say he has made Foreign Affairs his own.

Between bitching out Belinda and sucking coffee with Condi, he has been a busy heterosexual male, living up to his first name.

Perhaps he could replace Bev Oda as Minister in Charge of the Status Of Women, since Womens Equality is no longer included in the mandate. That would would be poetic justice it would make him Belinda's bitch.

But seriously though, will he get the knife in the back this Blogging Tory is predicting.?

If so that will spell the death of the last political link to the PC legacy in the party. And then Harper and the crew can get about carrying out their Reform Party agenda.

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Peter MacKay

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I Smell Election

I maintain that there will be no Federal election before the Fall.

Some of the Sunday News Pundits on CTV QP agree with me.

What we all agree on is that there will be an election in 2007.

When is the question, but there is no doubt 2007 is going to be a Federal election year. The cat is out of the bag.

Watching QP from CTV Regina an ad popped up from the Conservative MP for Palliser, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.

Not paid for by the Government nor the Conservative Party, but paid for by the Committe to Elect Dave Batters - Member of Parliament - Palliser

And it was identified as such, with the Campaign manager listed on the ad.
Just like a real Election ad.

Yep I smell election in the air.

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Election




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Edmonton Person Of The Year

So there I was in Hudson's on Whyte the very same watering hole where Rona Ambrose and Rahim Jaffer celebrated their election victories last year. And who should stare out at me from the newstand but Rona on the cover of SEE magazine, a local free weekly.

She made it as their Person of the Year for 2006

They included a tell tale photo of the Environment Minister touring her riding during the election in her new SUV. That says alot.

Which is why she is last years news. This year she will be gone from that portfolio quicker than you can say Global Warming.

And though she represents a suburban riding, she lives in Edmonton, in Old Strathcona in fact. Which is why she and her pal Jaffer hang out at trendy Whyte Avenue bars, allegedly before, during and after elections.

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Ambrose


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Minimum Wage Retort

The best way to identify those who are truly conservative and not the least bit progressive, but claim to be, is to see where they stand on minimum wage increases.

Mr. I Am A Liberal, Jason Cherniak sounds like the Fraser Institute in his attack on the NDP proposal to increase the minimum wage in Ontario. Say no to a $10 minimum wage

Yep he rolls out all their arguments; loss of jobs will ensue, businesses will close, blah, blah, same talking points the right wing uses. Which shows the Liberals real colours. Talk progressive but act regressive.

Now imagine his position on a National Social Wage/Living Wage. Why the same old canards would be hauled out. Despite the fact the Liberals off course say they favour a National Guarnteed Income.

What Cherniak and The Fraser boys forget is that wage increases means more money circulating in the economy. Those on minimum wages spend more on daily needs, including purchasing from local small businesses as well as large chain stores, investing their income directly into the economy. Moreso than those who get tax credits or tax breaks. In fact the argument of the right that Tax Breaks put money into the economy applies even moreso when it comes to minimum wage increases.

Why are Cherniak and the Liberalblogs still populating the Progressive Bloggers, well because actually it's their front group, the rest of the left is here just to give them cover.

Liberals Are NOT Progressives nor are they part of the Left. Jason proves it once again. Thanks Jason for clearing up any doubts anyone may have had.

Run from the Left, rule from the Right.

See:

Minimum Wage

Social Wage

Jason Cherniak


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Post Modern Conservatives

In an interesting article on the German Right Wing Conservative revisionist Carl Schmitt, who is the father of modernist conservative anti-parlimentary/ anti-liberalism, Matthew Sharpe contends that Schmitts theories apply to the Howard Government in Australia.

Australian conservatism & Carl Schmitt

What kind of conservatism (understood as non-liberalism) is emerging in Australia? I have mostly tracked this in terms of a hostility to multiculturalism, the national security state, the war on terror and hostility to Islam. I have taken it no further than this apart from gestures to Burke and Schmitt. AlI I've done is introduce Schmitt's idea of state of exception into the discussion as this is what the war on terror stands for.

Matthew Sharpe, in an article entitled A Coincidentia Oppositorium? On Carl Schmitt and New Australian Conservatism in Borderlands, argues that the new conservatism emerging in Australia has its roots in a different political paradigm to the Burkean one that is usually invoked by Tony Abbott and John Howard. Sharpe says that:

...my contention in what follows is that the recent revival within Western academe of the thought of authoritarian political theorist Carl Schmitt - already one more very interesting sign of the times - becomes only more interesting. For Schmitt's radical conservatism did not draw its inspiration from Burke. His conservative heritage instead came principally from Cattholic counter-revolutionaries Joseph de Maistre, Archibald de Bonald, and Donoso Cortes. This essay will read Schmitt's political theory as it were from within today's Australia, in the light or the quickly-changing shadows of our political times.

In fact they apply equally to the leadership style and politics of RH Stephen Harper as well. He has created a crisis of state over major issues, such as the Accountability act when he appeared in the Senate, the first Prime Minister ever to do so, to tell them to pass his act or else. Or else what? Face an election. On every issue that he has faced opposition over he challenges from a position of power; call an election. Knowing the opposition won't.

Matthew Sharpe
A Coincidentia Oppositorium? On Carl Schmitt and
New Australian Conservatism

After having deliberated on these theoretical matters, let me return to present political concerns, and the question of whether our circumstances allow us to say that a new political conservatism is emerging much closer to Schmitt's than to Burke's. A recent essay on "The Life and Legacy of Carl Schmitt" concludes with the ominous affirmation that "for better or for worse, the actuality of Carl Schmitt will soon become apparent" (anon., 2005).

In Part I of this paper, we saw how Schmitt's prescriptive positions are built around a strident critique of parliamentary liberalism, the "murky indistinctions" of its procedures, and its founding, internally divisive and existentially debilitating, faith in "unending discussion". The features of Schmitt's critique, I suggested, do strikingly anticipate the rhetoric, and many of the policies, of the Howard government in Australia which distinguish it from its Liberal predecessors.

In Part II, we proposed that Schmitt's thought can be differentiated from that of Burke and the anglophone conservative tradition, because it is above all a post-traditional conservatism. Schmitt is under no illusions about the sufficiency of a solely conservative appeal to tradition in the face of political liberalism, and the emerging social democracy of the twentieth century. Although Schmitt recognises the value of tradition or myth in generating cultural unity, that is, his fear that liberalism might collapse the "friend-enemy" distinction push him towards actively advocating the construction of new conflicts - for the sake of generating some post-traditional simulacra of the traditions uniting pre-modern societies. This move is carried out by him through the construction of an authoritarian theory of a decisionist sovereign defended for His existential "decisiveness" in the face of enemies and emergency alone, rather than by reference to any higher or inherited notion of the political good.

Harpers autarchic politics since gaining office reflect the politics of the crisis of the state that Schmitt adovcates. And it began with the crisis of morality of the Liberal party. The Conservatives used this as an excuse to manufacture a both a moral crisis of governance and a moral politcal response to it. As advocated by Schmitt.

Schmitt maintained that liberals overemphasized legality: their quest for a precisely organized system of legal rules was a futile effort to avoid political decision.

The crisis of a dithering Liberal party, indecisive, unable to resolve its own internal party crisis vis a vis being the State allowed Harper to then act as an autarch in power, with is Schmittian Strong Man act. Since then the main theme of the Conservatives is that they are The New Government of Law and Order.

Taking a leaf from the Spanish Catholic counter-revolutionary of the 1830s and 1840s (Donoso), Schmitt goes after middle-class parliamentarians for excessive reliance on legal arrangements.

And he is attempting to get around the Constitution and parliamentary law,as advocated by Schmitt, through Senate Reform, privatizing the Wheat Board and with their Law and Order agenda.

Regardless of our historical and political distance to Carl Schmitt, his writings continue to pose serious questions for any discussion of liberalism and parliamentary democracy,specially at a time when both in the United States and in the European Union the interpretation of constitutional law is undergoing considerable change.

Harpers first publicity act was to go out in uniform as Warrior King to visit the troops he sent to the front lines. And to go to war was not his toughest decision, it was a natural for the Schmittian autark.

In fact Harpers whole politics reeks of Schmitt. His self created political image; the strong man, decisive, decision maker, damn the torpedos. Unlike Mr. Dithers.

The crisis in the last parliment was a Schmittian construct, the Liberals legalistic approach compared to the Conservatives political approach. The Liberals wanted wrong doers exposed, the Conservatives knew who the wrongdoers were, the Liberal Party as a whole, and they wanted them punished.

True democracy, for Schmitt, means popular sovereignty, whereas liberal democracy and liberal parliament aim at curbing popular power. For Schmitt, if democratic identity is taken seriously, only the people should decide on their political destiny, and not liberal representatives, because "no other constitutional institution can withstand the sole criterion of the people's will, however it is expressed."

Harper has adopted the mantel of the Soverign. "The Peoples Soverign", and through his New Government of Canada the people are soverign. Not the politicians. They are not the real voice of the people, the real voice is Harper and his minority government. Best expressed in his outburst that only the Conservatives are the voice of the West and Western Farmers. So Damn the Constitution I will just go around it is his motto as it waqs for the Reform Party.

His is a short term government, one that face replacement by the Natural Governing Party; the Liberals. He must change Federalism and the Federalist State forever. In order not to allow the state to fall back into the hands of the Liberals, Harper must make irrevocable changes in the structure of the State, before he hands it back to the Liberals.

And he has only one chance to that. So his autarchic approach is not personal, a quirk, but is political, a Schmittian purge of all that is Liberal in the Canadian State. And this can be seen by the constant refrain of the Conservatives chanting You had 13 years and you did nothing, every time the Liberals say anything. The party of the Strong Man will do something. Because it may be the only chance they get.

Carl Schmitt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1921, Schmitt became a professor at the University of Greifswald, where he published his essay "Die Diktatur" ("On Dictatorship"), in which he discussed the foundations of the newly-established Weimar Republic, emphasising the office of the Reichspräsident. For Schmitt, a strong dictatorship could embody the will of the people more effectively than any legislative body, as it can be decisive, whereas parliaments inevitably involve discussion and compromise:

“If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.”

And Schmitt had a huge influence on the Godfather of modern Neo-Con Politics; Leo Strauss, who influenced both the Bush Cheney Rumsfeld White House and the Calgary School. When I think Strauss and Schmitt in practice besides Harper I think of one of his Calgary School mentors; Herr Professor Ted Morton.

Undoubtedly, the easiest access, and the best introduction, to Schmitt's radically original and disturbing vision of politics is afforded by his slim but immensely suggestive treatise, The Concept of the Political. Far more insinuative than what its modest title claims, the treatise forms, according to Leo Strauss, perhaps the most incisive and astute commentator of this infamous text, 'an inquiry into the "order of human things",... into the State.' Instead of offering an exhaustive and academic definition of the political, Schmitt conceptualizes it 'within the totality of human thought and action', in terms of the primordial and seminal antithesis between 'friend' and 'enemy': 'just as in the field of morals, the ultimate distinctions are good and evil, in esthetics, beautiful and ugly, in economics, profitable and unprofitable, so the significantly political distinction is between friend and foe.' For Schmitt, then, the political is primordial; it comes before the State and transcends its mundane and routine policies. It reveals itself, historically, at the foundational moment of the polity, and conceptually, in the unwritten metaphysics of the constitution. Indeed, the political in the specifically Schmittian sense incarnates existential totality and determines a choice between being and nothingness.

[PDF]

Carl Schmitt in English

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Autarky

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The Great Dismantler

An excellent article on the Harper Legacy of 2006.

Great Dismantler' puts ideology into action

I wonder if he is the Third Anti-Christ that Nostrademus predicted?

Well why not? Everyone else has been suggested, even if that was not the purpose of the cryptic cyphers Nostradmus used.

I am sure if I used the twisted logic of some folks I could make Stephen Harper work out to spell MABUS.

Nostradamus Would Have Been 503 Today

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Stephen Harper






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Tories Targeted Tax Cuts

To really get the best deal from the Harper Governments targeted tax cuts you should retire at 55 taking advantage of income splitting with your spouse, and quickly adopt two kids under six.

You or your spouse should then retrain for an apprenticeship in a new trade to take advantage of the tool tax credit.

And make sure those kids are enrolled in a hockey program.

Cause it's you and me paying for those targeted tax credits, thanks to the Tories rolling back the Liberal income tax cuts.

Someone earning $15,000 annually can expect to see $126 in savings, $45,000 will save $106 and if your income is $80,000 you should expect to save $232.


But the Canadian Taxpayers Federation can't agree on the situation with EI and CPP. One person says its going to cost us more;

Sara McIntyre from the Taxpayers Federation says Ottawa will do some extra dipping into your pockets as well. She says we'll be paying more for EI premiums and Canada Pension Plan payments will be increasing as well. McIntyre says there is no reason to pay for for employment insurance since the fund has more than a 40 billion dollar surplus.

Whereas their national spokesperson John Williamson says;

The benefits include a small decrease in employment insurance premiums and a new employment credit, which will offset a modest spike in Canada Pension Plan contributions.

Either way you and I pay will pay $70 more in taxes while selected Canadians get the targeted benefits of the Tories attempt to buy votes with tax credits.

"In some cases (people with young children) will see five times the amount of savings as individual Canadians," said John Williamson, head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

"For individual taxpayers without children the picture's not nearly as sunny. The average tax savings range from $100 to $120 in 2007."

The new lowest personal rate of 15.5 per cent represents a quarter-point rise from 2006, and a half-point increase from the rate set by the Liberals in late 2005.

Williamson calculates that an individual earning $35,000 will see average tax savings ranging from $80 in Newfoundland to $144 for Alberta residents.

Compare that to the savings for families with two children under age 6.

In such a family with a single income-earner making $80,000, the range of savings will be from $963 in Quebec to $1,545 in Alberta, says the federation.

A two-income family earning $80,000 with two young children will save approximately $800 in Quebec up to $940 in Alberta.

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Tax Cuts

Flaherty


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Criminal Capitalism The Story of 2006

In business the stories of 2006 that dominated the news were about the continuing expose of criminal capitalism, as a way of doing business.

Not as an abberation but as the way business is done, until someone is caught.

Whether with their fingers in the till or by refusing to pay for services rendered.

Though this business review missed my favorite story about the high tech media company that gave out backdated stock options to dead board members. Even Joe Volpe couldn't top that.


Corporate Crime Was the news story of 2006.

Conrad Black missed his three-peat as Canadian Business Newsmaker of the year, finishing a solid second behind Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, while the fallen media lord awaits trial in March in Chicago on charges of racketeering, money laundering, fraud and tax evasion.

But Black enlivened 2006 with a theatrical libel case against biographer Peter Newman, winning a statement of regret and dropping a $2-million lawsuit. Later in the year, the publishers of a new muckraking Black biography gleefully quoted his published opinion of the book in their advertising: "smut-mongering... malodorous pot-boiler... sewage."

In a more uplifting piece of litigation, Victoria's Secret sued Canadian lingerie retailer La Senza in March, seeking $1 million for alleged violation of its push-up-bra intellectual property. The suit was dropped late in the year as Victoria's Secret parent company Limited Brands bought La Senza for $710 million.

The year's corporate legal misadventures featured an admission in May by WestJet Airlines that its "highest management levels" were involved in a scheme to steal sensitive information from Air Canada, which had sued for $220 million. WestJet paid $5.5 million in costs and made a $10-million donation to charity.

Canadian-born former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers, 65, drove his Mercedes-Benz up to the gates of a Louisiana prison to start a 25-year term for the telecom company's US$11-billion fraud.

On the same late-September day, Andrew Fastow was sentenced to six years for his role as chief financial officer in the 2001 collapse of Enron Corp. A month later, ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling got a 24-year sentence.

Enron founder Kenneth Lay had died of heart failure in July, after being convicted with Skilling in the massive fraud.

America didn't have a monopoly on the fallen mighty: the founder of Korea's collapsed Daewoo conglomerate, Kim Woo-choong, was sentenced to 10 years for embezzlement and fraud. He was also ordered to disgorge US$22 billion.

And Hyundai Motor chairman Chung Mong-koo spent two months in jail before apologizing for setting up slush funds with embezzled money.

Lower on the pecking order of commercial criminality, a California couple who put a severed finger into a bowl of Wendy's chili and tried to extort money from the fast-food chain received prison sentences in January. Jaime Plascencia got a 12-year term and Anna Ayala received a nine-year sentence. On the bright side, she bragged that other prisoners were asking for her autograph.

Wendy's International was in the news again in March when it spun off Tim Hortons Inc. in an initial public offering that had investors lining up like deprived caffeine junkies at Canada's favourite doughnut-shop chain. The issue price in Toronto was $27 and the stock peaked at C$37.99 on its first day. It dipped under $27 during the summer before ending 2006 in the $33 range.

Back on the crime beat, as gasoline prices topped US$3 a gallon last spring, service stations across America reported fuel-related offences ranging from driving off without paying to posing as an employee and draining gasoline from underground tanks.

It was the worst of times for David Edmondson, who resigned as CEO of Radio Shack in February after it came to light that his claim to have university degrees in theology and psychology was false. His departure came after a 62 per cent tumble in the U.S. electronics retailer's quarterly earnings. In June, Edmondson was sentenced to 30 days in jail for drunk driving.

In another case of impaired judgment, Jim Whitehouse, a former RBC Dominion Securities vice-president, had his wrongful-dismissal suit quashed. He had been fired for drunkenly taking a prostitute to the firm's Calgary office at night and leaving her there alone after a dispute over her fee.

See

Criminal Capitalism Blog

Too Greedy

Bring Out Your Dead

Conrad Black

Money Laundering Canadian Style

Bank Theft

Credit Card Fraud

Primitive Accumulation of Capital

Corporate Crime

White Collar Crime

Criminal Capitalism

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